Travel Ban Sham

In today’s episode of really shitty policy ideas, we’re looking at President Trump’s Muslim ban. For the next 90 days, Executive Order 13769 forbids citizens of seven Muslim majority countries from entering the United States. The Executive Order also halts refugee resettlement for 120 days, and places an indefinite ban on Syrian refugees.

This ban is stupid on so many levels. First of all, there is no instance of people from the banned countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen) attacking Americans here in America. Now countries whose citizens have fucked us (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt) aren’t on the banned countries list. These are also countries Mr. Trump does business with.

I’m not launching an ethical debate about accepting refugees, because I don’t care. And honestly, most Americans don’t care. However, the threat of domestic terrorism is a joke. I’m more likely to be killed by a right wing Trumptard cleaning his loaded AR-15 than some refugee kid hugging me with a grenade wedged up his ass.

I dislike the ban because it lacks a success metric. If America was attacked by people from any of these countries and the ban was enacted, you could argue a drop in attacks showed the ban worked. If the number of attacks remains the same or increases, you can argue the ban failed. Since it has never happened, there is no baseline to measure success. If there was never danger, then you can’t claim to keep people safe.

And I’m not the only one. Executive Order 13769 has been criticized by both Republican and Democratic members of Congress. Nearly 1,000 U.S. diplomats used the State Department’s Dissent Channel to voice their opposition. In addition, protests were staged in cities, airports, and universities across the country. Despite these protests, polling in the United States show a fairly even split in support/opposition of the ban.

To be fair, I don’t believe Mr. Trump is racist. I do believe he is a small handed man-child who uses his wealth and fame to sexually assault woman. I also believe he is a sub-par “businessman” whose inherited wealth makes him too rich too fail. I also think he is a narcissistic bully with the emotional development of a Hostess fruit pie. None of that makes him a racist.